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Juventus scandal number 347

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peekay

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(Bloomberg) -- Juventus Football Club SpA Chairman Andrea Agnelli and the Italian football team’s entire board of directors resigned late Monday amid a probe into alleged wrongdoing related to the company’s financial filings.

“We are facing a delicate moment as a company and unity has failed,” Agnelli said Monday in a letter to employees, which was viewed by Bloomberg, adding that the exit would provide the team with an opportunity to start over.

The dramatic move comes in the wake of an investigation by Turin-based prosecutors and Italy’s market regulator Consob into some of the club’s recent financial balance sheets regarding alleged false accounting and market manipulation.

Juventus said in a statement it will have to restate its 2022 financial statement after a review of how players were accounted for. The team added it had amended its balance sheets, which will now need to be approved by shareholders on Dec. 27.

Shares in Juventus dropped as much as 10% in trading on Tuesday. The club has denied any wrongdoing.

Juventus at one point won nine consecutive top Italian league titles under Andrea Agnelli. But his reputation suffered after an attempt to lead the breakaway European Super League, a project that crumbled just days after its launch as teams pulled out under fire from fans, politicians and sports officials.

Spain’s La Liga, the top-level football division that’s campaigned for tighter regulation of European teams, called for immediate sanctions on Juventus after the surprise board overhaul.
La Liga will ask the sport’s European governing body UEFA and Italy’s top Serie A league to immediately impose sanctions in the form of point deductions or financial constraints, it said on Tuesday.

Fiat Founders
The Agnelli family, which founded automaker Fiat nearly 125 years ago, manages most of its properties through holding company Exor NV. It also controls Ferrari NV, CNH Industrial NV and media publisher The Economist Group Ltd, and is the largest single investor in Stellantis NV. The family has owned Juventus, widely known as Juve, since 1923, and manages it through Exor, led by John Elkann.

Juventus Deputy Chairman Pavel Nedved and Chief Executive Officer Maurizio Arrivabene offered to resign but the board of directors asked Arrivabene to remain, according to the statement.
The company also said it appointed Maurizio Scanavino as general manager and Gianluca Ferrero as chairman.

Scanavino is currently CEO and general manager of GEDI Gruppo Editoriale SpA, the media company owned by the Agnellis. Tax adviser Ferrero holds positions at shipbuilder Fincantieri SpA and Luigi Lavazza SpA
Read more: Juventus Football Club Offices Searched in Player Probe

Shares in the football club have declined almost 20% since January, giving the company a market value of about €692 million ($718 million). In 2021, the team approved a capital increase of €400 million.

Juventus is currently ranked third in Serie A. In September, the Turin-based club reported a €254 million loss, the largest in league history.

The club attributed the poor figures for the 2021-22 season to the effects of the pandemic and its early exit from the European Champions League. Some fans who paid for matches they were unable to attend were compensated, which cut into revenue, the company said.

Juventus has scheduled a shareholders’ meeting for Jan. 18 to appoint a new board of directors.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/juventus-football-club-agnelli-full-000117261.html

According to some journalists, this is more serious than the 2006 scandal as this involves financial crime and willful manipulation of the stock market.

Agnelli was also one of the big supporters of ESL with Juve, Real and Barcelona being the three clubs committed to ESL. This might be one more reason why FSG and Glazers decide to leave now as the chance of ESL reduces even further.
 
Hahaha - Agnelli never learns. Juventus 2nd division bound again and this time the players will have learnt ... abandon ship. Anyone we want?
 
Chiesa was quality before his injury. Has he recovered?
 
This is great news - we’ll be able to secure Arthur Melo on a permanent deal for a lot less than the £35m written into his loan deal.

And Juve will gladly punt him for a lot less - then claim asset depreciation losses in their financials on him - which is exactly what they have been doing for years now.
 
Just checking that you all appreciate that Arthur Melo is probably at the heart of this scandal - i.e. the inflated swap deal between Juve and Barca involving him and Pjanic, which inflated the profits in both club's accounts. I'd only thought of it previously in the context of fixing profits for FFP purposes, but I suppose there are wider considerations when you think about stock prices etc. I just assumed that Juve weren't listed, or else the analysts would see through it and adjust share prices accordingly.
Will be interesting to see what else has gone on here - wouldn't be surprised if the Agnellis have taken some costs off the books into other businesses to make things look better (like City have been accused of doing with manager salaries / image rights).
 
Arthur Melo on a free it is then!!!

All our dreams coming true
 
Just checking that you all appreciate that Arthur Melo is probably at the heart of this scandal - i.e. the inflated swap deal between Juve and Barca involving him and Pjanic, which inflated the profits in both club's accounts. I'd only thought of it previously in the context of fixing profits for FFP purposes, but I suppose there are wider considerations when you think about stock prices etc. I just assumed that Juve weren't listed, or else the analysts would see through it and adjust share prices accordingly.
Will be interesting to see what else has gone on here - wouldn't be surprised if the Agnellis have taken some costs off the books into other businesses to make things look better (like City have been accused of doing with manager salaries / image rights).

Isn't the implications more serious because Juventus is a publicly traded company? It goes beyond sporting fraud, doesn't it? In India, there was a high profile case 10 or 15 years ago where the CEO of one of the top software companies was jailed because they were inflating profits to make the share prices go higher.
 
Isn't the implications more serious because Juventus is a publicly traded company? It goes beyond sporting fraud, doesn't it? In India, there was a high profile case 10 or 15 years ago where the CEO of one of the top software companies was jailed because they were inflating profits to make the share prices go higher.
Yes, it’s likely that some of what they’ve done will be more serious because of the stock market rules. I saw an article after I posted this which said they had done what I assumed.
Their argument on the Arthur / Pjanic deal was that the valuations there were subjective and, in an accounting sense, because the assessment of valuation of players in the accounts always looks at the squad as a whole, you can argue not to write down an individual player who looks over-valued if you have others in the squad who are under-valued. So in an LFC context, if we had bought a player who flopped, we wouldn’t take a write-down because we would argue that Trent (for example) is worth a lot more than his accounts value, so overall the squad is worth at least what is in our accounts.
However, that only works for players who are “part of the squad”. So when a player goes out on loan, you might have to write him down (especially if the loan deal includes a purchase option at less than his accounting value). In that respect, they made a mistake, in an accounting sense, loaning Arthur to us, as that will probably trigger a write down. The write-downs we have had in the past (called impairments) seem to have been triggered by us loaning out flops (e.g. Carroll, Aquilani).
In reality, most club’s squads are worth more than what’s on the books. Unless they’re flops, younger players will at least hold their full value until the last 18 months of their contract, at which point they’ll drop quickly, but mid-contract, a player will be valued in the accounts at half of his purchase price and if he’s succeeded then he’s probably worth more than the original cost. That’s without accounting for youth products and bargain buys who’ll be worth a lot more than they cost.
As for Juve’s costs recorded off the books, that will potentially be securities fraud, unless the costs sit somewhere else within whatever the traded group is (ie if the overall group costs are not understated, then you could argue it doesn’t really make any difference to a shareholder and to the profits the group reports). I don’t know enough about their structure and what the listed group looks like to know whether that’s the case.
 
Just confirming Melo was on Juve’s books at €49m at the end of June 2022. No way he’s worth that much.
He was their second most valuable player, behind Vlahovic, who they’d only just signed.
 
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saw this now - not sure how accurate but if it is ....

Matthijs de Ligt has been involved in helping the Italian police raid Juventus' offices after president Andrea Agnelli and co. were accused of hiding losses and accounting fraud.
According to Corriere dello Sport, de Ligt and former teammate Mattia de Sciglio helped expose Juventus by leaking Whatsapp messages as evidence to the Italian police, which helped them immensely in the investigation. As a result, the whole Juventus board ended up resigning.
Background, during the pandemic, president Agnelli announced that the players would receive a salary cut for 4 months, which would help the club during the hard times.
The reality: the then-Juventus captain Giorgio Chiellini had told the players that only one month would have a salary deduction, while the other three would be paid underhand. This is how Juventus allegedly hid over 200 million euro losses in the past few years.
 
saw this now - not sure how accurate but if it is ....

Matthijs de Ligt has been involved in helping the Italian police raid Juventus' offices after president Andrea Agnelli and co. were accused of hiding losses and accounting fraud.
According to Corriere dello Sport, de Ligt and former teammate Mattia de Sciglio helped expose Juventus by leaking Whatsapp messages as evidence to the Italian police, which helped them immensely in the investigation. As a result, the whole Juventus board ended up resigning.
Background, during the pandemic, president Agnelli announced that the players would receive a salary cut for 4 months, which would help the club during the hard times.
The reality: the then-Juventus captain Giorgio Chiellini had told the players that only one month would have a salary deduction, while the other three would be paid underhand. This is how Juventus allegedly hid over 200 million euro losses in the past few years.

Truly de Ligt shines in the darkness
 
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